


of love's austere and lonely offices (what did I know)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [255]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Fingolfin is a good dad, Gen, Interlude, Mithrim, Plots and Plans, anger issues, but like...reasonable anger Turgon has many sound reasons for being upset, title from a poem by Robert Hayden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24872905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Turgon does not know sort of weapon he would be, if life turned him to a thing only of steel and sinew. He has not felt like a whole man in some time. In a long time.
Relationships: Aredhel & Turgon of Gondolin, Elenwë/Turgon of Gondolin, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Turgon of Gondolin, Fingon | Findekáno & Turgon of Gondolin
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [255]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	of love's austere and lonely offices (what did I know)

In his dream, Turgon is choking. His throat still seizes when he wakes. He half-expects the air around him to be the culprit: a dream turned real. His bedroll _was_ near the fire, but Mithrim’s fires do not smoke. Even if they did, he reflects, thrusting himself up on his hands, it would be nothing he is not well-used to.

When they slept at all, in the blizzard, it was with their faces turned so close to the dying coals that flesh less frozen would have burned.

He lifts one hand; scratches the back of his neck. The light streaming in the fort’s narrow windows is white, snowed through with dust.

“You look like death,” Aredhel says, crouching beside him and offering him an apple. His sister’s hair is already braided over her shoulders, and he wonders how long she has been up and about, wandering between slumbering lumps of comrades and strangers, learning the workings and secrets of their new shelter.

A shelter—not a home, of course. Never a home, for Turgon will never allow it to be. He cannot even be certain how long Father intends to stay. Father and Fingon are absent since the evening prior: they were swallowed by the sick room, along with the attention of everyone else in the fort.

Gnawing at the apple, which is sweet for a late crop, he reconsiders. Maybe not _everyone_ else. Perhaps, to Mithrim’s original occupants, the newcomers are more noteworthy than the return of Maedhros Feanorian.

Turgon, more noteworthy than Maedhros? The world is strange.

“ _Turgon_ ,” Aredhel says, to his silence. Like an arrow, his sister’s glance. Parting the world. Turgon does not know sort of weapon he would be, if life turned him to a thing only of steel and sinew. He has not felt like a whole man in some time. In a long time.

It should have been different.

“I’m still half-asleep,” he answers.

“Really?” She frowns. “You were twitching and moaning all night.”

Does she want to share in his hurt?

Turgon makes the decision for both of them.

“I dreamed of her last night.” Turgon twists the plain band around his finger with his left thumb. It is a concession to touch it—to wear it—to speak. “Of them.”

Aredhel’s brows draw together. Carefully, she says, “They are safer, there.”

“They would have been safer if I’d stayed!”

He snapped. She flinched. Now they are staring at each other, weapons thrown down, and Turgon does not know what _she_ sees, but he can see father and mother and brothers in her face.

(He and Aredhel did not get on, in the years before. They were too ignorant of each other’s interests, too frank to be friendly. Now they are a huddle of two comrades in a stone-vaulted tomb. Yes, there is a fire. Yes, there are warm bodies. Still: a tomb.)

Aredhel whispers, “Do you wish you had?”

He wishes that Fingon would not kill himself, and Fingolfin with him, trying to save a heartless stranger. He wishes that his wife and baby were comfortable in a placid, prosperous New York home.

His mother cradled little Idril in her arms, before they departed. His father did, too. Argon was even the first one to guess their predicament.

And yet? Memories, all. Memories, only. At the time, Turgon could do nothing more than stand by, twisting his hands, painfully aware that their family was far from whole.

_I should have known that we were whole. It should have been enough: all of us there._

“I wish we had stayed,” he said. “In New York. God damn it, Aredhel. I suppose I must hate myself most, for failing. Failing to hold all of you back from your madcap loyalties.”

Aredhel’s gaze darts from left to right. She wonders if they will be overheard. She does not chide him on this score, however. Instead, she says,

“People make their own choices.”

Turgon has finished his apple. He rises, kicking his bedroll aside. “Argon didn’t.”

A cruel shot. He is a weapon after all, and there are tears in his sister’s eyes. Aredhel swipes her palm across them. A private gesture; her back is turned to the rest of the room. The tomb is busy, busy and strangely quiet, as its bodies go about their duties. “Don’t.”

“ _Don’t_?” Whose anger is this? Is it Father’s? It can’t be—Fingolfin is never angry enough. What fury he have burns quickly to the white ash of sacrifice. “You—”

“I can’t lose you, too,” Aredhel hisses. “Turgon, please. Look around you. This whole place feels unfriendly. I miss our days with Haleth in the mountains. I can’t let my mind stretch further back than that, or I’ll go mad, but don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

Her honest affection only makes him colder. He won’t hurt her again—won’t say anything more—but his limbs are heavy. His hands, useless.

He held Elenwe with these hands.

He held his daughter.

 _Idril Celebrindal_. A tiny rosebud creature.

Turgon should be with _them_ , or else he should be dead. His continued life, so many miles from them, is an abomination.

This place, an abomination.

“You won’t lose me,” he says, quiet and dull. He is not the brother Aredhel loves best. He wouldn’t want to be.

He wants Fingon—a Fingon who could understand. He wants his father to comfort him, but he has wanted to be a man and not a child before that.

 _It should have been enough_. He doesn’t know anything, now, except the hurt and the hate, the ice-block body nearby fire-heat.

An hour later, he has eaten more than an apple, and stands peering out the long, narrow window. It is wide enough for a hand or a gun-barrel, but not wide enough for even a child to crawl through. Whoever built this place was afraid. That’s another reason not to find comfort in it.

Aredhel has joined Galadriel. They are not mixing with Mithrim’s women; they are speaking with Beren, who is, in turn, entertaining the two scrawny imps whom Haleth’s company rescued.

No, Turgon corrects himself. Gwindor brought them back. _Maedhros_ rescued them.

Maedhros is still the hero, no matter what was done to him.

No matter what he did.

Turgon has had few opportunities to see his cousin closely; to see him in the light. He has scrupulously sidestepped such opportunities. He knows that Maedhros woke last evening—Fingolfin and Fingon disappeared on that very account. Soon Finrod will follow. Soon the whole world, he thinks, will follow.

(Turgon held his brothers—both of them—at the gaping jaws of a burned bridge.)

His father finds him, still beside the window. Time is torment, but Turgon loses count of it anyway.

“I haven’t seen you since supper, last night,” his father says. “I’m sorry.”

He does not want his father to be sorry. He wants his father to be angry. He wants whatever it is that lasts longer than white ash.

“You didn’t sleep.” It isn’t a question.

Fingolfin shakes his head. “I did. Not long, but longer than your brother.”

He does not want Fingon to—

“Turgon, I have a request.”

His father trusts him. He did not expect that.

(He should have known that this was enough.)

“What is it?”

(A good son would offer his father anything. There are things that Turgon will not give.)

“I am not a leader,” Fingolfin says. It isn’t a lie, because _he_ believes it—but it is very far from Turgon’s truth. “As you know, I have been preoccupied with your cousin’s recovery. With your brother’s sanity. And yet—Turgon, I fear we have brought danger to these people.”

“Feanor did it first.”

His father lost a brother, in his mind. Turgon remembers that, and the ache of it, only when he sees both ache and memory on his father’s face.

(A good son—)

“I do not doubt that,” Fingolfin answers. “But consider. We have been here only a few days. Haleth and her comrades have moved off. Godspeed to them, and may they find safety. But we have rescued captives, and brought them to the stronghold of an embattled company. Beyond that, too, I fear…I fear, as I imagine we all do, that Maedhros was more than a slave to Melkor Bauglir.”

Turgon has thought so, and done nothing with the thought. At present, he is still more interested in his father’s request than in his cousin’s plight. “What can I do?”

Fingolfin sighs. “I am failing you. I know it. I have failed your cousins, too—I know you believe we owe them no debt, and I do not place one on _you_ , Turgon, nor on your siblings.” His hand on his brow. His hands at his sides. His eyes, calm and kind, despite the sleep-torn weariness in their depths. “I have _chosen_ an obligation. That is all. I think your grandfather would want it so. He always wanted peace.”

Turgon cannot wholly suppress the bitter breath of a laugh, even now. Even before his father. “We’re not at peace.”

“No. We are very nearly at _war_ , and yet, I know nothing of the weaponry, the strength of this fort. Turgon, I need you to learn—to report to me. Tell me what preparations Feanor made before he died, if you can. I will ask Finrod to help you. First, I asked him to speak to Maedhros. The memory of their friendship has been a thorny one for him, of late. I think the wound should be healed before he is ready to look outwards. That is why I have come to you.”

“You want me to speak…to Curufin.”

His father half-smiles, the expression strangely rusty, and then shakes his head as if to clear it. “No—no. I do not ask that you speak with any of your cousins directly, if you don’t wish to. There are other men here, some of whom will know the place better than they do.”

“You only want to know how we can win a war outside these walls,” Turgon says. How much of that irony does he hope his father will grasp?

“I want to know first how we can fight one. Then I shall pray that war does not come.” Fingolfin is watching him, more carefully than Turgon is ready for, and then both his father’s hands clasp his shoulders. “I am failing you, Turgon,” he says, very quietly. “Every day since we set out. Before, too, I think. I fail you when I cannot bring myself to think of that. Of the journey. I will not beg your forgiveness while asking for your help."

“I’m not angry with _you_.” Turgon is choking again. The words find their way, nonetheless.

“I am so grateful.” His father holds on, an instant longer. “So very grateful, for your generosity.”

Fingon is the generous one. Fingon is the one their father loves best. No, no—it is not that Fingolfin has ever treated them differently…shown one speck of forbearance or affection towards Fingon that he shielded from his other children.

It is only…Fingon will always be Fingon, whatever else the world is, and Turgon has seen their father know that.

“I’ll do my best,” he vows.

He is not happy, here. It will not be his home.

He will help his father defend it.


End file.
